Which art books, prints and posters are available by and about this artist? Here is a sample of items of interest to a typical collector:
Jamel Shabazz, American, b. 1960.
Shabazz is a documentary, finart, and street photographer, whose decades-long career has focused on archiving the vibrancy, style, and resilience of urban communities. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Shabazz first picked up a camera at the age of fifteen, deeply inspired by the pioneering documentation of Black life by photographers such as James Van Der Zee, Gordon Parks, and Leonard Freed.
In 1980, after returning to New York following his military service, Shabazz embarked on a clear visual mission to extensively document the cultural shifts, fashion, and everyday moments of connection across New York Cityparticularly in Brooklyn, Queens, Harlem, and the West Village. Set against the backdrop of the emerging hip-hop renaissance and youth culture, his portraits deliberately challenged the era's negative media stereotypes by capturing his subjects with "honor and dignity". Notably, during the 1980s, Shabazz also worked as an officer at Rikers Island, where his camera remained by his side to take compassionate portraits of inmates to share with their families and friends.
Shabazz's extensive visual diary has yielded several critically acclaimed monographs that are widely considered essential to the history of New York street culture:
Shabazz's photographs have been exhibited globally in prominent institutions. Notable exhibitions include his major 2022 survey, Eyes on the Street, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, as well as showcases at the Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Beyond his photographic practice, Shabazz is a dedicated teaching artist and community volunteer. He has consistently worked with youth programs across institutions like the International Center of Photography and the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, emphasizing photography as a vital tool for historical preservation, social responsibility, and personal empowerment
The influential Brooklyn-based photographer Jamel Shabazz has been making portraits of New Yorkers for more than 40 years, creating an archive of cultural shifts and struggles across the city. His portraits of different communities underscore the street as a space for self-presentation, whether through fashion or pose. In every instance Shabazz aims, in his words, to represent individuals and communities with "honor and dignity."This book, which was awarded the Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize, presents, for the first time, Shabazz's work from the 1970s to '90s as it exists in his archive: small prints thematically grouped and sequenced in traditional family photo albums that function as portable portfolios.
Shabazz began making portraits in the mid-1970s in Brooklyn, Queens, the West Village and Harlem. His camera was also at his side while working as an officer at Rikers Island in the 1980s, where he took portraits of inmates. This book features selections from over a dozen albums, many previously unseen, and includes his earliest photographs as well as images taken inside Rikers Island, all accompanied by essays that situate Shabazz's work within the broader history of photography.